Dead Man Walking
by CrawlingInChaos
Summary: "This isn't what I wanted for you." "You knew exactly what you were doing."


The medical bay doors creak open, sparks flying in from the outside corridor as the rest of the building continues to crumble. Medical Officer Ziegler storms through, staff over one shoulder and black-clad body over the other. She mutters to herself, a veil of half-panic, half-professionalism flowing over her face as she clips her cacudeus staff into its position over the operating table. Slowly, she lowers the body onto the steel rectangle and connects it up to the thankfully intact heart monitor, the spluttering, barely conscious form of Gabriel Reyes opening his eyes and flooding her with temporary relief.  
"Doctor Ziegler? What-" He begins to speak, but flinches hard and lets out a hacking cough, blood trickling from the side of his mouth.  
"There's shrapnel in your gut, your ribs are shattered and you've taken heavy blunt force trauma to the lungs and head." Ziegler snaps at him, not making eye contact as she starts collecting all of the medical supplies she can find in the last intact part of Overwatch's Swiss headquarters. "If you want to be comfortable, don't speak." She flicks a switch on her cacudeus staff, its golden light slowly flowing into Gabriel's torso.  
"I'm gonna die anyways, can't we have one last talk?" He says, visibly in enormous pain but smiling through it. The doctor just sighs at him, rolling up her coat sleeves and slipping her hands into surgical gloves.  
"The cacudeus unit will pull your ribs and lungs back together, but I'm going to have to remove the shrapnel manually." She tucks the straps of a surgical mask onto her ears and snatches up a scalpel. "If you're going to speak, at least explain why you and Jack blew up half the damn facility. This is going to hurt, try not to bite through your tongue." She doesn't seem to be too sympathetic, and Reyes can't tell if it's because she's hiding her worry or if she's geniunely angry. Maybe it's a bit of both.  
"You know men. Always measuring dicks. I guess I lost my temper a little." Gabriel laughs a little, but winces and shuts his eyes as Ziegler starts cutting into the flesh of his stomach and peeling it away.  
"Right next to the armoury. Smart of you." She mutters as she looks past his now-exposed stomach and at the two-inch shard of steel embedded in his small intestine. "Now shut up and let me get this out, I'm not losing both of you in one day." Fingers flexing, she reaches into Reyes's abdomen and gently grabs onto the shrapnel, pulling at it in small increments to hopefully free it without causing any more damage. The blood on her hands, however, makes it difficult to get a strong grip, and in her mix of anger-masked panic and concentration she doesn't notice the sharp edge pressing against his stomach lining until it's too late.

Her thumb slips and presses the rough steel into his flesh; he screams in agony, back arching as his stomach is split and blood and acid starts pooling in his abdominal cavity. Ziegler flies into a panic, roughly yanking out the steel and undoubtedly doing even more damage before frantically fiddling with her cacudeus staff with one hand and trying to hold his stomach in place with the other. Gabriels screams combine with the frantically shrieking heart monitor to fill the room with horrifying white noise, the doctor looking around the room frantically for anything helpful. Out of the corner of her eye she notices a small implement on a side table, shaped like a pistol and containing a four-inch syringe-like cartridge. Formulating a plan in her head, she runs over and snatches it up, praying that it operates in the same manner that Captain Amari's biotic rifle used to. She clicks a side button on her cacudeus staff, the gold beam turning blue and it's rotary section spinning frantically. The light flows into the biotic pistol, the hilt almost vibrating under the pressure.  
"Come on, Gabriel, stay with me..." She mumbles as she presses the pistol to his chest. Her eyes dart up to the heart monitor immediately as it flatlines, and she pulls the trigger in her shock. The dart zips into Reyes's flesh with an electrical whizz, the inbuilt plunger pushing the supercharged healing fluid into his bloodstream. He starts twitching and spasming, the heart monitor launching back into action in an erratic manner, his heart sometimes beating four times a second and sometimes not at all. Ziegler sits still, eyes wide as his skin grows pale and his face sags, his eyes empty. After a few seconds he stops shaking so much, slowly sitting up and twitching near-uncontrollably. The doctor slowly opens her mouth, holding out her hand. "Gabriel, I..."  
"Get out."  
"Gabe-"  
"I said get out."

His voice is cracked, now hollow and lacking the depth and intensity it used to have. "Gabriel Reyes died with Jack Morrison." He mutters, swinging his legs over the edge of the operating table. Ziegler slowly stands up, taking her staff out of its mount and walking over to the door. Taking one last look back, she notices him looking in one of the mirrors on the walls. Once strong yet humble eyes now sunken and emotionless, and skin once the colour of milky coffee now sickly and grey. She sighs and walks out into the corridor, taking out her personal radio as it lights up with a concerned, booming voice.  
"Swiss headquarters, come in. This is Watchpoint Gibraltar. Is anyone still alive?" Winston's earthy tones give the doctor minor relief, but it doesn't show when she speaks.  
"This is Medical Officer Ziegler. The explosives cache was detonated when Commander Morrison and Blackwatch Director Reyes fell out in the armoury." She mumbles into the radio, almost forgetting to push the transmit button.  
"Angela? Is Jack alright?" Winston asks, the sound of frantic keyboard tapping coming through the radio.  
"Strike Commander Morrison is dead, Winston."  
"What about Gabriel?"

Ziegler looks back into the now-empty medical bay behind her, the window smashed open with Reyes nowhere to be seen.

"So is he."


End file.
